ReMothering with Clara Belize Wisner

Clara Belize Wisner
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Personal Journals
  • Updated Semimonthly

ReMothering is a podcast dedicated to nourishing women at all points on the mother-continuum. clarabelize.substack.com

  1. 3d ago

    Sober Spirituality

    I have a poet’s Soul. I want to go deep. I have always profoundly felt life. I have always wanted to make beautiful things because it feeds my being and for no other reason. At 17 years old I got a tattoo that says, “you make your own reality” in latin. 21 years ago I was already aware I was a creative force in my own life’s unfolding. I was a spiritual seeker from a very young age. I grew up in a household where I was allowed to be spiritually-curious. Both my parents went to church when they were kids (my mom Methodist and my dad Lutheran) but don’t seem to have any religious ties, trauma or negative feelings towards the church or strong indoctrination (beyond the Chrisitian cosmology all Westerners are indoctrinated with.) When I was young I think my parents tried to become part of a Unitarian church community. Ultimately my early experience with religion and spirituality was through Rumi poems, Buddhist philosophy books, and going to church on Christmas with my grandparents. I remember the relief I felt reading ecstatic spiritual poetry even though I didn’t understand it. I remember the joy in being able to sing hymns in a group. I wanted more of those things, I just didn’t have any idea where to get them. I felt the ‘true god’ in my household was Academia. My mother is a professor and has phD in computer science. My father is a agricultural economist with a plethora of higher education under his belt. Mind and science were of the highest value. Critical thinking was the goal, always. Both my parents have a palpable love of learning and definitely passed that love to me. A Sense of Brokenness I can track back to adolescence the feeling I needed to fix myself. I knew that I was broken and if only I could find the right glue to put the broken plate of myself back together, I would be ok. If only I worked hard, succeeded in school and then career, looked good, was effortlessly cool, not too sensitive, always strong, reliable and stable, and impressive I could, maybe, someday in the far future, earn the right to relax. It makes total sense to me, looking back, that my spiritually-seeking-and-inclined-self would see spirituality as a very attractive solution to this sense of brokenness I carried underneath the surface. Some people who feel broken get smaller, more timid, like a dog with its tail between its legs. They opt out of life. They curl into a ball and wait for it all to be over. Then, other people who feel broken decide maybe they can earn their right to take up space. These people will just work and work and work, push and push and push, force and force and force. In a way, they can seem bigger, larger than life even, but the truth is there is very little room for their humanity or needs. There became a desperation to my seeking as I achieved the things I set out to. The things I achieved didn’t actually make me feel less broken. How many people have this story? Maybe everyone on this Earth to some degree? Maybe what I am attempting to describe is partially ‘the human condition’? The ‘original ouch,’ I’ve heard it called, of separation from the Oneness or the dark, quiet, watery weightlessness of our mother’s womb. Maybe this severing is the brokenness we feel? Wherever this sense of being cut off or cut up comes from, it seems most of us expect the solutions to be outside of ourselves. We seek the perceived soothing balm of material things, accolades, relationships, self denial, substances, addictions, and even spiritual practice, only to find our feelings of brokenness still there, under the surface, driving us. The Wellness Industry The personal development/wellness/new-age-spirituality industry is just that— an industry. It is a money making machine. It’s the high quality supplements, organic/’clean’ food brands, endless educational courses on everything from gardening to kundalini yoga to thyroid health, retreats, incredible apothecaries, life coaching, business coaching, parenting coaching, spiritual coaching, find-your-purpose coaching, awakening womb care, gold and semi-precious stone jewelry in shapes of goddesses, niche body work, somatic therapy, spiritual communities, slow fashion, minimalist organic skin care, plant dyed silk undies… you know what I mean. It’s all amazing stuff. I am a sucker for it all myself, I want fixing just as much as the next person. I love nice, quality things that feel aligned with my values. Generating money or being part of an industry does not necessarily imply there is any foul play. However, the rampant spiritual materialism present in this industry is something we must be willing to look at within ourselves with a sharp and humble eye. It comes from this sense of brokenness we all experience to some degree. Spiritual Materialism Spiritual materialism is a concept coined by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa to describe the tendency to use spiritual practices, teachings, and experiences to reinforce the ego rather than dissolve it. It involves treating spirituality as a material possession or status symbol, such as accumulating credentials, boasting about enlightenment, or seeking temporary emotional states to avoid suffering. In my own definition of spiritual materialism; it is when we try to use our spiritual beliefs, practices, or ideals to ‘get’ something our personality (as opposed to our Soul) wants. We don’t want to feel broken so we seek something we think will “fix” it. We don’t like feeling sad or down, so we try to fill our days with practices or read self help books. We don’t like feeling angry so we try to meditate or “regulate” the rage away. We feel tired so we seek out another supplement or protocol that might make us feel energized ALL THE TIME. We’re bored or unsatisfied by our life so we seek out plant medicine journeys, more travel and novelty, or spiritual teachers who seem to have the answers or practices we need. We are willing to try harder. We are willing to push ourselves more. We are broken and we need fixing! Being Who You Are I recently heard this Marion Woodman quote and it felt like a bell clanging through my whole body: “It’s easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are.” - Marion Woodman How many times have I tried to push beyond what I actually had the capacity for? How many times have I over-promised, over-gave, or been in fantasy about what I can show up for with my full presence? Question: Why would I do that? What would make that kind of pushing of myself make sense? Answer: A desperation to find ‘the answer’ to my restlessness and sense of inadequacy. What would it look like to be where I am? To be who I am? With the capacity I actually have? With the bandwidth I actually have? Spiritual materialism rewards premature certainty, good branding, and shallow interpretation over depth, nuance and reverence for the process one must experience to become the person Life is asking us to become. Spiritual materialism is the spirituality that comes from desperation, not wholeness. What We Want is Not Where We Are Seeking It In this moment in time so many of us are seeing the insidious s**t storm that lives under the slick plastic surface of our collective narratives. We are feeling and becoming aware of the deadening of our human hearts that is required to live in the status quo. We want more alignment. We want more coherence. We want a world that values more than just ROI, productivity, and output. I truly believe we all have poets’ Souls. We want a world that values our unique and creative Soul essence and fosters it. We want the radiance that comes from integrity between mind, body, and Soul. We want to re-member our wholeness. If this is what you are seeking it will not come from more money, more certifications, more plant medicine journeys, or from a spiritual teacher. It won’t come from eating only clean food or taking the ‘right’ supplement. It won’t come from finding your ideal partner. It won’t come from having the perfect non toxic furniture. It won’t come from your community or only ever surrounding yourself with people who share your particular values. It won’t come from the next ceremony or book you read. Some of the above things may be a part of your unique journey. You may need to create more financial stability. You may need to have more mystical experiences or take some supplements that work for you. But, the combination of things that make up your path will be yours and yours alone. There is no silver bullet and, ultimately, the answer won’t come from outside yourself. There is the story about a man who spends his life searching for a precious jewel. He goes on adventures, has painful experiences, journeys far and wide, only to find, in the end, the jewel was in his pocket the whole time. The experience of wholeness will not come from a desperate searching and grasping. Though, paradoxically, desperate searching and grasping may be part of the journey back into ourselves. It will not be one thing that shifts it all for you; it will be an undertaking. There will be no flash of lightening from sky and an all-your-problems-are-solved moment. It will be a slow and steady paradoxical process that will require your participation and your full presence, as well as your realization that there is nothing wrong with you. This is your one and only, precious life we are talking about. And it is yours and yours alone. Sober Spirituality It’s human nature to want the quick fix and to believe if you have what you think you want you’ll be happier. It’s normal to believe the change you’re seeking is in something tangible and not something you have access to right now. Spirituality was never meant to be about what kind of food you eat or clothes you wear. It isn’t about what retreats you can afford or influencers you know. It’s about being willing to let God lead

    16 min

  2. May 10

    The Mother Continuum

    **this is an adaption of piece I wrote in May 2024 on Mothers’ Day. It’s updated and tweaked to include new ideas, thoughts, perspectives I’ve had since then. Hope you enjoy this version on Mothers’ Day 2026 Today, on Mothers’ Day, (and honestly all my days) I have been thinking about our relationship to Mother. As I wrote the cards I sent to my mother and my mother-in-law I was struck by the continuum of mothers who allowed me to become a mother. If either of those two women had not become mothers I could not be the mother I am today. And if their mothers before them had not become mothers… and on back. This is the red thread. The mother line. The line of the blood. Fun fact: only women and their children live on Earth. Parent Blaming There is a trend in the collective of parent-blaming. There is a trend of looking at the way we were parented and holding it to a current standard and calling it ‘toxic’ or ‘traumatic.’ This is not to say some of us weren’t hurt by our mothers. It’s not to say they did it all right. It’s definitely not to say we should lower our standards for motherhood. It’s not to say it was ok. You may fully deserve to be victimized by the way you were mothered. You may legitimately and fully be a victim of your mother’s pain. You can experience this as true. You are allowed to. And I hope you really do feel it because the only way to not pass it on is to feel and integrate your experience. When one person in unwilling to feel their pain, they will put it on the people around them. This is an energetic law. Sometimes the most vulnerable people are the easiest targets for passing down pain. An awful truth of humanity is the unprocessed pain we are all walking around with and subject to. But, when we are fully grown adult women, it’s time to stop asking “Why did my mother do this to me!?” And start acknowledging, “Wow. My mother was in a lot of pain.” It’s not even necessarily about forgiveness (although, remember, forgiveness isn’t for the other person, it’s for you), it’s about realizing that people, even our own mothers, are multifaceted beings. They could have a part of them that deeply loved us, but another part that was deeply wounded and instead of feeling, integrating, and dealing with that wounding themselves, they passed it on. This is how pain works. It moves through families until someone is willing to feeling it. It may be we were just innocent bystanders of their wounding. So many women were/are just surviving. The saying goes, “You cannot teach a starving man about God.” And you cannot expect a woman stretched to her physical, mental, and emotional limits to process or integrate generations of trauma and pain. Acknowledging this doesn’t make it ok that we were hurt. It just takes out the blame and the shame. Mother Wounding Holding a grudge towards our mothers, I believe, results in holding a grudge against The Mother. The Mother can hold it. However, holding this grudge will result in our mommy wounds being played out with other people in our lives. If you find yourself constantly looking for approval and validation from, or you’re constantly in conflict with, women you perceive as more powerful than you, you may have some mother wounds. If you feel like you cannot open, reveal yourself, or connect with people who deserve your trust and vulnerability, that could be rooted in mother wounding. If you feel like you can’t nourish yourself, don’t take time rest and fill your own cup, feel very uncomfortable simply being, feel a lack of innate worthiness, that could be related to your relationship with the Feminine principle or The Mother. When I read Elayne Kalila recent article, What Happens When the World is Motherless, I was struck in the gut by a few of her descriptions of what it feels like in the body to be motherless. Here are the quotes about that especially pinged for me. “You have never once in your adult life laid your head in someone’s lap and been stroked until you fell asleep. When you are sick you manage it. You order the soup. You cancel the meetings. You text your mother an update if you have one. Nobody comes. When you cry, you cry alone, usually in the bath, usually at night, and you clean yourself up before you come out. Your own mother is aging and you do not know how to be near her grief, or your own, so you phone once a week and keep it light. We do not know how to grieve, or how to descend, or how to rest, or how to belong. We are ashamed of what makes us alive.” The reason our mothers were/are in pain is because of a lack of what I’ll call the mother nutrient or feminine nourishment. The same reason we feel pain and hurt in this place because we were/are missing that too. See how the solution is not pointing fingers? It’s not making them see their mistakes. It’s not holding on to all the ways we were hurt as if holding on to to our hurt will save our life. The solution is to feel our pain. To let it move through us. To be with it. To orient to the Great Mother as mother. To let ourselves be seen by those that can be trusted with our vulnerability. To reveal ourselves to ourselves first. To reach into our hearts and remember we belong here. To allow ourselves the simple joys of living, mothering, and nature. What I do want to invite is an appreciation for all that was overcome for us to exist as we are, the mothering we received and the mothering our mothers received, from the women in their lives, from their aunts, and from the Earth. Everyone has dealt with some pain. Everyone alive has prevailed over something awful in their life time. For those of us who are also mothers ourselves I want to point to the joy of our own motherhood that we would not be able to experience without the life of our mothers and grandmothers before us. Respecting Our Mothers You exist because they exist/ed. This is the level of respect and honoring for all mothers that this day invites us in to. Humanity is messy. It is complex and nuanced. I have the experience that the harder I am on the world, the more I judge and find wrong in it, the harder I am on myself. The more I judge my own choices. And the more I judge myself. There is so much joy available in motherhood if we move away from this harshness. There is so much depth available when we’re willing to go into the darkness and look at what’s there. There is so much beauty in feeling these soft warm small bodies on ours. The little voices figuring out how to communicate and be heard. Can we let that open us a little wider today? And if you don’t have children, can you let your little one feel your joy at being the one that gets to hold her now? Can we all lean on female friend or friends to hold us in our grief? To share in our joy? Can we let ourselves our be mothered? Can we mother those around us? Can we let the tasks list, the exhaustion, the ideas of should, the ways we are doing it all wrong, go today and drop in with our children/inner children and feel the pure joy that lives there? Our creations! The creation of mothers back and back until the beginning of time! It is awe-worthy. It is worth celebrating. Thank you to the Mothers. Thank you to The Mother. Thank you to my mother. Thank you to my husband’s mother. Thank you to all the mothers that hold me and mother me while I mother (because we NEED that so much). Thank you to my grandmothers and my great grandmothers and on back. May we all find our joy in mothering today. And if not, may we start to get clear on the changes we need to make in our lives so that our joy can shine through. Because a mother’s joy will heal all wounds. Happy Mother’s Day to all. I would love to her from you in the comments or by replying: What is your relationship to mother? What brings you joy in motherhood? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  3. Apr 24

    Motherless to Mothered

    I woke up at 5am this morning unable to turn my mind off and go back to sleep. Thoughts and feelings of rage, helplessness, heartbreak, and deep, deep concern for humanity swimming in my mind. I am writing this maybe a little more activated than I would normally would write something for the public because, generally, I don’t believe the world needs more activated people writing things out into the void. But there is something here I need to say that I haven’t said before. I am surrounded by great men. The men in my life are exemplary humans. They love me, protect me, respect me, and want the fiery truth of my womb as well as the soft nurturance I can offer. The men in my life love me, Clara, as a human being. To say I am grateful for them isn’t even to touch a fraction of how I feel towards them. I weep tears of unending thanks thinking of all they offer and do for me. I have daughters and I am so glad they have such good modeling of what men are and can be. My Rage & Motherless And, so much of the pain, rage, and heartbreak I feel is because of things men are largely directly responsible for. The news about the 62 million visits to this site called Motherless where men drug their wives (their wives and the mothers of their children) and rape their unconscious bodies and film it so other men can watch. There are 20,000 videos like this on the site. There is a direct link to a telegram group where men can trade dosage instructions. This isn’t on the “dark web,” this was just right out there on the internet. Anyone could have accessed it: motherless .com. I think part of the reason I am so disturbed is the name of this site. As that’s it, exactly: this is motherless behavior. All of this riding on the coattails of the Epstein files which showed us just how rampant the objectification of girls and women is among the elite and even the most “spiritually evolved teachers.” To quote Sophie Strand’s recent article, Do You Think I’m Being Overly Dramatic, “Every ten minutes a woman or girl is killed by her intimate partner or family member. Every 1.3 minutes a woman is raped. Every nine minutes a child is abused. These numbers are conservative and likely much, much higher. All accounts of sexual abuse are underreported.” The sex trafficking. The prolific use of porn and sex dolls. The disrespect of aging women. The obsession with keeping our bodies and faces young, perky, and childlike, so that we can use our ‘youthful-sexual-attraction’ like a currency. The ‘marriage benefit gap’ eg women who are coupled with men have across-the-board worse health outcomes than single women, whereas men have much better health outcomes when they are coupled with women. Why would this be? Because women are literally giving their life-force to their male partners. It is so easy to get entirely swallowed up in the disturbing-ness and hopelessness of these statistics. And yet, even in my grief and heartbreak, I know better than to let my mind follow the path these statistics would have it go down. I let myself feel the grief. I let myself feel the rage. I let myself feel the hurt, ache, and sickness. But, I am committed to not getting pulled into the vortex of stories and comparisons that could so easily make me hate and distrust all men. We are all Suffering The truth is, even though men are directly responsible for motherless . com and all that it represents, the problem itself is not men. No. We are all suffering; some as the victims and some as the perpetrators. We are all sick. We are all motherless. These raping men, overtaken by domination-based power, hatred and violence, these men, are indeed motherless. And, they were little boys at one point. They were malleable, sensitive, gentle, innocent, babes. They were toddlers, learning how to move in the world. They were teenagers growing up in a society that praised only patriarchal strength and endless productivity. They grew up in a society where the degradation and objectification of the Feminine was common practice. They were raised by human mothers who wouldn’t allow their pain. They were raised by men who didn’t protect their innocence. I am not defending what these men did or how they acted. I would never defend the full grown adults that make evil choices. I know at some spiritual level they will absolutely get what’s coming to them. They live in their own personal hells, I have no doubt. I have zero impulse to save them from any of the consequences of their actions. I have zero impulse to psychoanalyze any of it away. We need to make strong, swift, public, unforgiving, persecution, and examples of these men. This is what The Mother would do. She would say: No. Enough. This will stop. The Motherless world needs The Mother, for all of us. It’s not about vindication or punishment, it’s about what we are willing to allow. I am also thinking of the mothers who look the other way when they know or suspect their children are being abused. I am looking at the mothers who abused their own children. I am looking at the women who helped ‘groom’ children or participate in the industry of sex trafficking. I am looking to all the women who perpetuate their own objectification. I am looking to the women who are so angry, they can’t see how there are also pixels within them that have allowed the creation of the motherless world we now live in. I am looking at the way motherless women can’t trust their blood, gnowing, and No. When I hear of men acting like this I can’t help but ask, “Where are their mothers?” And that is why the name of the site struck such a chord with me. This is not to put the blame on their mothers or to transfer any responsibility to the victims of these kinds of men. Not at all. Please be victimized. You are a victim of something sick and disgusting. Feel your pain. Feel your rage. Let it rip through you. I will hold space for you in all of the grief, pain, and suffering. I will cry and rage with you, as my body and soul have also been affected by these types of men. But what can we do to make sure this stops happening? Is it to give up and not trust any man? Is it to refuse to offer our love, our nurturance, to opt out of heteronormative dynamics all together? I would understand if a woman answered yes to these questions, truly. However, it is not my path to eject my participation. My path is relational. My path is to call the Feminine principle forward and hold it in my tissues and bones. To call the Tower Feminine, the Mature Feminine, The Mother, forward in the face of all this motherless-ness. What I Want to Ask Men If I have anything I want to ask of the good men out there; it is, of course, to speak up when they see women being objectified in ANY way. To stop falling into their fragile ego concerns of judgements and use their precious, righteous, beautiful masculinity for change; internally and externally. To care for the women in their lives like they are sacred and holy. To appreciate the humanity behind every woman. To see every women as a sacred vessel of the divine. To hold us in our grief, anger, and heartbreak without feeling as if we are personally accusing you of being evil, as you have the capacity for. I want to ask the men out there reading this to see our bodies as the body of God. Just as I want them to see their own bodies as the body of God. But mostly what I want to ask these good men wiling to do ‘the work’ is that they look within the deepest, darkest, most slimy corners of their psyche and bring to light to the parts of themselves that hold the possibility of this wretched behavior. To get to know the parts of themselves that are capable of murder, rape, degradation, domination, and perpetration of all kinds. To really look at the parts of themselves that want bald pussies, fake boobs and flawless skin. I want these men to stop watching porn, definitively, and forever. I want these men to create brotherhoods built on true protection of the Feminine principle. To share their darkest corners with other men who will hold them accountable to their actions. I want these men to get to know Her love. I want these men to become Mothered. What I Am Asking of Myself I am expecting the same of myself. To really get to know my darkness so that it cannot drive me. To constantly be willing to bring my darkness out into the light with people, teachers, mentors, and practitioners that can hold it and hold me as I feel. To build the container of my true Self up so that I can hold the paradox of my “badness” and “goodness” with conscious awareness so that I can make the choice which part of me leads. I ask myself to love the men in my life ferociously and completely. To see them as warriors of light. To remember their preciousness. To see them through the eyes of the Mother, when I have the capacity to. Denial is not the answer. Outrage can be and is appropriate, but it is not the final destination. It cannot be, because if it is, then what is happening will keep happening. We do not change this motherless world through blame and shame. We change it through recognizing where the collective disease lives within ourselves. We change it through seeing where the poison lives in us and bringing the light to those places. The antidote is not suppression, it is letting the light in to our darkest corners. We end this sickness by saying, “No. More,” and being willing to experience the death of the identify that comes with it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

    11 min

  4. Apr 16

    Emotional Eating, Honoring Our Needs, & Our Holy Bodies

    A popular spiritual teacher, Mami Onami, recently wrote an article about how she identified, and has subsequently stopped; “emotional eating.” She also posted on instagram about how all spiritual practices praise “fasting.” And how using food ‘as relief’ makes you fat. I have been enjoying following this woman because I love women who are not afraid to look unhinged or crazy. I love an expressed woman. I love when people just say what they think. I find such a relief in knowing I can trust someone to just say the thing. Most women I know could use a lot more raw, full expression. That being said, I am an expressed woman myself. I have some strong thoughts and opinions on this concept of ‘emotional eating,’ and the spiritual connection to food, so I will also go ahead and share my unhinged beliefs here. Most Health Aware Women are Under Eating The truth is: most health-aware women are under eating. I see it again and again in my practice. Women come in to work with me. I have them track their food for 3 days. The majority are eating well under 2000 calories. Most women are under the impression they need to eat less or at least ‘control’ the types of food they’re eating a lot more. The rhetoric that people are overeating is everywhere. The collective idea of good health is that you are pure, worthy, and immaculately disciplined if you can survive off salad and green juice. This is not true. Our bodies need fuel to LIVE. Our bodies need calories, balanced macronutrients, and plenty of micronutrients to produce energy, rebuild our tissues, operate our immune system, sleep (yes! You need energy to sleep well!), think, and detoxify our bodies. Eating less food does not make you better or more worthy. Eating only vegetables does not make you more pure. Denying your body’s needs is not a badge of honor. It’s the exact road that leads to the destination of depletion, burnout, and massive dysregulation. We under eat, try to willpower our way to greater purity (eg skinniness) and then wonder why we start getting mysterious symptoms in our 30s, have no energy, and constantly feel overwhelmed by the demands of regular life. I talk about the importance of eating enough constantly on my instagram, on this recent podcast with Olivia Lara Owen, and in the Grounded Nutrition class I just taught (you can get the replay for free here). The Truth About Cravings So many intense cravings come from micronutrient deficiencies, eating too little calories overall, or eating inconsistently (which can easily cause minor to major binging and restriction cycles). Yes, there may be an emotional component to these cravings, but I implore you to work with your nourishment on a deeper level before assuming you just need more ‘willpower’ or your desire to eat is somehow not rooted in your physical needs. If you do struggle with binging or ‘emotional eating’, how has relying on willpower worked for you so far? Most people who do struggle with emotional eating have tried a million ways to use willpower to stop it. I am so familiar with this myself. I know the attempted tight gripped force to the falling-off-the-wagon-shame-and-punishment wash and repeat cycle so well. It was my story for years. Some more useful and pertinent inquiries to ask yourself are: * Have you actually focused on getting 100% of your micronutrients from your food? * Do you eat defined, hearty, macronutrient balanced meals at regular, consistent intervals? * Are you sure you eat enough for the energy demands of your unique life? * Are you eating enough carbohydrates to fuel ovulation, thyroid function, and brain activity? (This minimum is around 180g of carbs per day for women, which is 2 medium sweet potatoes + 1 cup orange juice + 1 cup blueberries + 2 cups rice or MORE over the course of a day). If you aren’t answering yes to these questions, then I would definitely focus on these before I would worry about trying to eat less or control your ‘emotional eating’. Emotional eating does exist. I’m not saying it doesn’t. But what most people think is emotional eating is just the body trying to meet its needs. The body never lies. If the body is asking for something there is a reason for it. That reason may be emotional, but it could very well be physical. This is where people assume it’s emotional and don’t consider what it actually takes to fuel a body well. When your body is fueled really well consistently, cravings are drastically minimized. I, personally, rarely have cravings for anything. I get hungry. I eat a lot of food. That’s it. I, of course, have preferences. I like certain foods, but mostly I am totally happy just eating a lot of really good quality, solid, even, boring food. What if You’re Simply Not Hungry? So what if binging isn’t your issue? What if you know or you suspect already you don’t eat enough? What if you’re just not hungry? In the article, Onami, says her realization about emotional hunger versus physical hunger came after she got a two day stomach bug and lost weight because she wasn’t eating. Not eating increases stress hormones. When we are sick our body may need to reroute some energy or clear the stomach to do the work it needs to do to rid itself of the bug, but this will raise stress hormones. The best thing we can do when we’re sick is hydrate and try to nourish ourselves as best we can. When stress hormones rise hunger decreases. Stress hormones also reduce our perception of pain. Stress hormones make us a lot less sensitive to our body’s needs overall. This is actually their evolved function. Stress hormones can function a lot like an upper. We feel ready to take on the world! We can actually feel really good in a manic sort of way. Especially when we figure out a way to get an even higher dose of stress hormones (like eating a lot less than we’re used to). Stress hormones are an awesome evolutionary adaption to needing energy when there wasn’t food available. So that we can go find food. This adaption wasn’t meant to be a place we live in permanently, but this is where we may find ourselves when we chronically under eat. If you tend to just ‘not be a big eater,’ or have trouble feeling hungry, especially when you haven’t eaten for long periods of time (like in the morning, for example), this is an indication your stress hormones are probably high. If our stress hormones are high, we actually can’t really trust our hunger cues. We should never ‘force’ ourselves to eat food, however, we do need to stop the stress hormone cycle and remember to fuel our bodies. What Onami’s whole article sounds like to me is someone who is just revved up on stress hormones. Running on stress hormones is expensive. It is like taking a loan out of the bank. Eventually, you will have to pay that money (energy) back. People are different, have different stories, backgrounds and constitutions. Some people can withstand a ton of ‘running on stress hormones,’ others are more delicate and sensitive and will feel the effects much sooner. For everyone, there will be a reckoning at some point. It could be the vegetarian, super health conscious, marathon runner who drops dead at 55 because of a heart attack and everyone is so confused because “they were so healthy!”. It could be the midlife health crash and insomnia after a lifetime of pushing beyond our body’s limits. It could be fertility challenges. It could be crippling depression or anxiety. It could be lots of little things: digestive distress, thyroid issues, injuries, low energy levels; death by a thousand paper cuts. These seemingly unexplainable or non-sensical health issues can actually be very well be explained by living in a low energy availability (LEA) state and physiological high levels of stress, for years and years of our lives, thinking we are doing the ‘right health thing’ by eating as little as we can. In this lifetime, the body will always win. The Elephant in the Room… The elephant in the room is: eating as little as we can goes along with endeavoring to be as skinny as possible. Why are so many people under eating? Well, because they don’t want to gain weight, of course! I also don’t want you to gain fat, but I do want you to stop prioritizing the slimness of your body over your own nourishment. Eating enough to fuel your energetic needs should not make you gain weight. In fact, eating enough to fuel our energetic needs is when we get to really heal and build our resilience. There are plenty of ways to nourish yourself well and fully without packing on a ton of excess fat. Fat is protection. If you do gain a lot of fat just by eating enough calories for a grown woman then this is a sign your metabolic function is low and you may need to go through a slow, methodical, reverse dieting process to rebuild your metabolic health. This would involve increasing your food intake very incrementally over a long period of time (could be years). Your body will be happiest at a weight that makes you feel nourished, safe, grounded, and full. When you focus on nourishment, you will have the body your Soul belongs to. Not some skinny replica of someone else’s body, while feeling miserable. Spirituality and Food This brings me to Onami’s assertion that all spirituality praises and encourages fasting. It is true there are lot of spiritual practices that involve fasting. But fasting intentionally for a spiritual purpose is very different than just trying to eat as little as possible all time. If a woman wants to fast as a spiritual practice then let her go to a cabin away from all her daily duties, work, children, and home so she can really experience the spiritual aspect of it. Asking a woman to fast while she is working, caring for children, working out, and holding a home, is not what the spiritual sages had in mind. It’s beyond our body’s capacity. Most of the e

    13 min

  5. Apr 2

    A Wrinkle in Time, Recurring Symptoms and Retracing

    Last Friday I came down with quite an intense cough; tons of congestion, runny nose, sore throat, and general malaise. When I was 8 years old I started to come down with repeated respiratory infections. I would get these epic sore throats and coughs. I would cough all through the night, unable to sleep. My coughing fits sounded like a dying dog and frequently ended in me almost throwing up. My abs would be so sore the thought of coughing made me cry, but I would still uncontrollably hack away. I would get so embarrassed in school because of these fits that any time I needed to just clear my throat I would have crippling anxiety. Asthma was suggested by a doctor. I had an inhaler that felt like it saved my life a time or two. Point is; I have a history with coughing and respiratory illness. Around 20 years old, well into my self-abuse via food restriction, substances, and alcohol, I got Scarlett Fever (yes, like what the pioneers used to die from). I guess you can get this if you let Strep Throat go untreated (and also binge drink and don’t feed yourself while you have it). After that, I did a bunch of “research” on my own and decided to get my adenoids and tonsils removed. I reasoned this would solve my seemingly unending issues with respiratory ailments. After the preliminary appointments with an ear, nose and throat doctor I found out I had insanely huge adenoids and tonsils, probably from a life time of mouth breathing and my genetic facial structure (another rabbit hole I’ve been down but won’t go down right now). The removal of my huge adenoids and tonsils actually worked for me (although it’s not necessarily what I would recommend knowing what I know now). I haven’t really struggled outside of a yearly cold since the removal. However, in the last four months I have come down with two pretty severe nose/throat/lungs illnesses where I’ve lost my voice. This most recent one being very reminiscent of my early days with the coughing fits that just won’t quit. In the world of Mineral Nutritional Balancing (MNB) there is a concept called “retracing.” According to Dr. Paul Eck (the grandfather of MNB): “Retracing” refers to a temporary return to earlier physical or emotional states during a healing program—especially when following a carefully designed nutritional protocol based on hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA). In Eck’s framework, retracing happens because the body is correcting deeper imbalances in reverse order of how they developed. As metabolism improves and mineral patterns normalize, the body may “revisit” past stress patterns, toxins, or weaknesses. The retracing concept holds: * Healing is not linearThe body doesn’t simply move forward into better health. Instead, it often unwinds layers of dysfunction, moving backward through previously adapted states. * Old symptoms can reappear temporarilyA person might experience past issues—fatigue, skin eruptions, emotional states, or even infections—that had seemingly resolved. In Eck’s view, this is not regression but evidence of deeper correction. * Mineral patterns drive the processAs key minerals (like calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, copper, and zinc) rebalance, enzyme systems and glandular activity shifts. This can reactivate stored metabolic patterns. * Detoxification is involvedRetracing often overlaps with the release of stored toxins (especially heavy metals), which can temporarily stress the system and mimic older symptoms. * A sign of progress (if managed correctly)Eck said that retracing should be mild and self-limiting. Strong or overwhelming symptoms suggest the protocol may be too much for the person. How I think about this is: the body is basically replaying old imbalances and issues so that it can heal and resolve them more completely. As I’ve been laying awake in the midst of these unrelenting coughing fits I have had crystal clear memories of similar nights as a child. It feels almost like I’m literally touching those past times again. It’s like the experience of the symptoms themselves are creating a wrinkle in time. I definitely don’t believe time to be only linear. I’ve had too many mystical experiences where I’ve experienced connection with my past or future self in the present moment. My reality exists in cycles and spirals, not straight lines. This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced retracing viscerally, I’ve been on a MNB protocol for about 3.5 years (off and on), but this is the first time I’m really seeing how we can truly rewrite our stories through this process, if we’re willing to experience our recurring symptoms in a new way. When I started getting these coughs as a child I remember feeling that my vulnerability (sickness) was a problem. The coughing all night was not fun for my parents (as a parent.. I know this to be true). I know my parents were worried about me and also very inconvenienced by my needing to stay home from school, go to the doctor, etc. I got the message, “You’re not as lovable when you’re sick.” As I am retracing this illness, I am being faced with the part of me that was cut off from love for being vulnerable, and this, right here, is what I get to rewrite through the wrinkle in time created by my recurrent symptoms. There is no blame here. As a parent, I really understand how there is sometimes a limit to how sympathetic and nurturing we can be when we’ve been kept up all night and we have work to do in the morning. We do our best. I’m sure my parents did their best. We do not get out of life unscathed. This is an unfortunate truth. However, as adults, we do get to choose how to see our symptoms. We get to choose how to be with them. I am now an adult. And, I have little hurting parts in me locked away in compartments. We all do. We don’t have to go digging around for these locked compartments (please don’t, they are locked away from a reason), but when one presents itself to us through a symptom or a memory or a process we are in; this is when we get all of our mature adult hands on deck, use our tools, feel our feelings, get brave and courageous, fall apart, and, ultimately, bring this part home. This is when we get to integrate that part in a way that makes us more whole. Healing is being on our own side. Or, as my mentor Coly Vulpiani says, “Healing is complete and radical self acceptance.” Recurring symptoms do not have to be a hamster wheel of frustration, panic, and urgency. They can be an invitation into a wrinkle in time. When was the first time you had these symptoms? What was going on in your life? What were you learning or being shown? If you’re interested in Mineral Nutritional Balancing you can always book a connection call with me to talk about how it might serve you. In Deep Nourishment | A Course in Foundational Care for the Female Body we will go over the basics of mineral nutritional balancing and how you can work with remineralization to heal and rewrite your body’s story. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  6. Mar 14

    Is There Such a Thing as Eating Too Much Fat?

    Is there such a thing as eating too much fat? I know the dietary fat conversation has gotten a little confusing. I thought fat was good? I thought we needed all the animal fats for the nutrient density? I thought we needed it for our hormones? I thought I should put enough butter on my bread I can see my teethmarks when I bite in? Yes! We absolutely do need fat. Good animal fat is soooo nutrient dense. And BECAUSE of how dense it is; it can create sluggishness in an already slowed down system. And, this is part of why we need to bring a little more nuance into the conversation. I do not want to add to the noise of extremes and pendulating dietary trends. I do not want to encourage anyone to do anything that doesn’t feel good in their body or shy away from anything that IS feeling good in their body. BUT, if you feel like you’re doing all the things and still don’t feel quite right.. there could be some wisdom in this more nuanced discussion of dietary fat intake. If you want more of this practical, non dogmatic, grounding back into the basics of nutrition for women check out: Deep Nourishment | A Course in Foundational Care for the Female Body. We will get into more of these nuances. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

    15 min

  7. Jan 29

    "The Personal is Political"

    I have been circling around, feeling into, digesting, metabolizing, holding in my prayers the events happening in Iran and Minnesota in my own way over the last few weeks. I do not consume news on a regular basis through any channels (other than reading my local newspaper weekly) because: 1. I have a very sensitive system and I know myself well. I’m not afraid of ‘dysregulation’ but I am solidly aware of how much I can actually hold within my body without going unconscious. I am in a season of life where I have young souls to shepard and my solid, stable presence is needed here, at home. As Mother Theresa said, “You want to change the world? Go home and love your family.” I take this very seriously. 2. My personal life, the way I live, how I spend my money, the work I do in the world, and the way I hold myself, is my activism. It is how I use my energy to create the world I would like to leave my children. I am very clear and very passionate about this. As I’ve heard credited to Marion Woodman (although I don’t think she originated the quote) “the personal is political.” I truly live by this concept in so many ways. My way of living and being is my rebellion. However, it can feel a little off in some way to be posting about my business and little memes about nourishment when it feels like the world is on fire. The Two Camps There is one camp that says, “Be professional.” This voice says, “You don’t need to weigh in on every political disruption.” “No one cares what you have to say about politics, just stay in your lane.” This voice is the voice of business as usual. This doesn’t feel attuned to the thread of Truth and authenticity I aspire to uphold. And yet, it is exhausting and not necessarily in service for me to add my voice to the cacophony of enraged and disembodied voices. There is another camp that seems to be more prevalent these days in the social media sphere: “Share every single thing you think.” It’s become fashionable and popular for anyone with a social media account to share their political views perpetually, at all hours, and without discernment or consideration. In fact, for some (and I’m so glad this is not my readership) not sharing your political views or stance is akin to sin. The threat of ‘silence is compliance.’ As always, the Truth is somewhere in the middle. It’s not ok to float right over all the atrocities and current events and act as if nothing is happening and just go on posting about my offerings. It’s also not ok for me to lose my s**t and report every single thing I think and feel when it isn’t related to what I’m in the public eye sharing about. Wide Open Heart, Big F*****g Fence Maybe surprisingly, I think of myself as a private person. I would not have social media at all if it weren’t in service to The Mother for me to do so. I don’t always want the attention on me. I can be comfortable in the confident leader role and I can also be comfortable as the quiet, back-of-the-room observer. I have a very big, robust, and strong fence around my heart because of how open, soft, and sensitive my heart is. As Danielle LaPorte says, “Wide open heart, big f*****g fence.” I keep my inner circle very small, on purpose. It’s taken me until my late 30s to get comfortable and clear with this. I share a good deal about my personal life, but anything I share is for the specific purpose of teaching on a larger theme. I am not just sharing my life to share my life. I am sharing my perspective/experience to illustrate a universal deeper meaning. That’s the way my writing and expression works. I show what I would like to teach with my beingness. I become the lesson. However, this doesn’t mean I share anywhere near the majority of my unique and personal process. I am also a messy, unsure, hurting-at-times human, after all. My messaging politically has been consistent throughout my whole tenure being in the somewhat public eye. I belong to neither side. I identify with neither side. On a personal level, I agree with one side on some things and I agree with the other on others. I am on the side of humanity, and that is a not a political party. Something I read today hit home: “Love your neighbors more than your government.” I am on the side of humanity, of love, of courage, of beauty, of the thread of organic Life. Always. Separation Has Always Been the True Enemy Separation has always been the true enemy in my eyes. Atrocities happen. They happen for no good reason. I would never try to explain away or gloss over pain, suffering, and real injustice. My spirituality doesn’t avoid the dirt. It is about brining the Soul into the dirt, the body, the matter. Not in a “lets make meaning out of this” way, but in a way that honors the organic and God. A long time teacher of mine, Coly Vulpiani wrote recently: “What if the quality of energy we are expressing in the name of justice is actually feeding the very atmosphere we are trying to change? Not because our concerns are wrong. But because of the quality of consciousness we bring to them matters…. In times like these what we are becoming matters as much as what we are resisting.” What we are becoming matters. This is the creator’s focus: in the face of atrocities, what and who am I becoming? What am I embodying with my actions, words, and thoughts? We are creators and artists. Each and every one of us in a co-creation with our reality and those around us. This isn’t woo woo mumbo jumbo. This is quantum entanglement. This is the field within which we all abide. How we show up matters. The “quality of consciousness” we bring to a situation matters. We cannot fight violence, disconnection and insanity with violence, disconnection and insanity. As Martin Luther King said: “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." We don’t have to go out and hold signs on the streets to be activists. We can if that feels right for us. We don’t have to call our senators. We definitely can and should if that’s what feels right for us. We don’t have to ‘be political’ in any way shape or form to be advocates for the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. We do need to love each other. Truly love. We need to become the people that can do conflict differently. We need to bring integrity and coherence into our work, our homes, our relationships, the places we spend our time, where we put our attention. We need to clean up where we’re sitting. The personal is political, after all. For me, this looks like a very deep and personal practice of prayer. I spend precious time each morning with my attention on all the pain and hope emanating from Iran. I send the freedom fighters my energetic support. I allow myself to reach into the hearts of the people in pain and offer them my love. I pray for the souls of the people in the regime causing the hurt to wake up to their own despair and feel it. I pray for Trump and ICE agents and the families being torn apart. Sometimes, I breathe in the agony and suffering into the alchemical energetic chamber of my heart and breathe out love. I do this over and over again. I use my attention and intention to bring coherence to the field within myself and the one we all inhabit. I am reminded of the poem, Call Me By My True Names by Tich Nhat Hanh. I remember that one being’s ache is my ache. Make Art with Our Pain We need to make art with and from our grief, our misery, our fear, and our suffering. People always lament, “What can I do!? I just wish I could do something!” This is what we “do.” I am not saying every person needs to become a painter or a sculptor, but in the broader sense of artist, as in making something that is uniquely yours and did not exist before you came to be on this planet. Maybe it’s taking a walk every morning and dancing with the sunrise. Maybe it’s the way you chat with a stranger at the grocery store. Maybe it’s baking biscuits for your new neighbor. Maybe it’s writing poetry or love letters. Maybe it is making an epic protest sign and holding it in the freezing cold. Maybe it is writing a post on social media. Make whatever it is with your whole heart, the grief, the rage, the hopelessness included. I believe this to be the greatest act of resistance. I can never pretend to understand why the atrocities happening in the world happen. I would never desecrate a mother’s or a father’s or a child’s or a friend’s pain by trying to explain it away. I do encourage all of us to express ourselves through art. To make our pain known through an act of creation. To let ourselves and our pain be seen, heard and felt through our unique extension of ourselves and our love out into the world. Please, let us know in the comments, what are you creating? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

    13 min

  8. Jan 4

    Awakening is Painful

    “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” - Carl Jung I’m writing this in the first few days of 2026. It has not been an easy transition. I haven’t had anything drastic externally happen to me or my family, although I have had two very tragic events happen to people adjacent to me. My personal life has been nothing but really quiet, sweet and simple. And yet, so much inside me is moving. Like the tectonic plates within my reality are lifting, shuddering and re-jiggering. When an unconscious aspect of ourselves and our patterns comes into our conscious awareness, it can feel like it threatens the very fabric of our reality. I have felt this the last couple weeks. I can feel my reality changing, at its very core. We have a few options when we’re feeling like this: 1. We can deny it. Try to push the uneasy feelings underground. We all will do this for awhile. It’s human nature to deny change. I personally don’t know anyone who feels a whisper of change on the horizon and just willingly surrenders to it right away without any denial. But, the longer we shove it away, the more uncomfortable it gets. It’s like trying to hold a lid on boiling water, eventually it’s going to spill and get all over everything. We can find all sorts of ways to release a little steam here and there. so we can play dumb about the awakening for a long time. We can deny anything is off or needs adjustment. We can stick our fingers in our ears and say, “LALALALALA,” for quite a long while. We can get really distracted and pulled into all sorts of side quests that take us away from the actual realization our Soul is pointing us towards. Nothing is wrong with this. It’s all part of the process. It takes so much courage to be truly honest with ourselves. 2. We can fight with it. Then, eventually we are no longer able to deny it any long. We become aware something needs to change. And then we fight it. We resist it. We don’t believe it’s possible. We don’t see a way to make the change or integrate the realization. A friend of mine said when speaking about realizing what we must change, “Anything but that. I can do anything but that.” This is how awakening can feel, “I could literally do anything but that.” So we fight. We claw at the walls. We resist the sensations, feelings, despair, honesty, vulnerability, and weakness that comes with change. Most of the time, we have be beginners again. There is a way awakening will always bring you back to square one. Being a beginner isn’t fun for most people. This is also totally normal. We can’t stop fighting until we’re ready to stop fighting. It’s all part of the process. It takes real courage to lean into the despair and not fight with it. 3. We can surrender. We can have faith. We can move into the awakening willing to be carved, changed, and trusting that all it brings is for our and everyone else’s highest and best good. Any difficult experience we are having/have had is an opportunity for an awakening. The most truly faith-filled people I know are the people who have been through unthinkably difficult experiences and come out the other side with more grace, wisdom, and faith in some guiding force that is beyond our comprehension. This doesn’t have to be a religious faith. This isn’t always the same faith I have. However, I do not know a way to truly get through the arduous and stripping-away task of awakening without it. You need a tether into something bigger than you. Our small human minds cannot weather the immensity of our Soul’s tasks, desires and journeys without a tether to some meaning outside of our small selves. This is why throughout human history, you will always find faith, spirituality, and a relationship to something mysterious and unlimited at the center of the human condition. Faith doesn’t give you a reason for all the awful things that can happen in the world. Nothing can. Faith doesn’t tie our lives up in a pretty bow. Faith doesn’t mean there is a big daddy in the sky coming to save you. Faith means you can say yes to your Soul. It means you can take a leap into the unknown, knowing whatever happens, you’ll be caught. It takes a lot of courage to have faith. Faith doesn’t make awakening easier. Knowing that you’ll be caught doesn’t actually make the jumping into the abyss any more comfortable. There is still crippling fear. There are still nerves. There will be more despair just around the corner. There are still all the parts of you who don’t have faith or who need to “see it to believe it.” We are not all one way. “I am large. I contain multitudes,” as Walt Whitman said. The big misconception is that faith will somehow save us from pain. We think if we have faith, we’ll be able to just “give it all to God” or breeze through our challenges with a smile and a wink. This hasn’t been my experience of faith. I know for me, personally, I have a deep, deep practice of faith. Faith is the foundation upon which I live and know myself and I have never come to the precipice of a big change, transition or awakening in my life without feeling completely and totally terrified. Faith simply gives me something to practice while I’m in the midst of pain and unknown. Once I’ve stopped denying. Once I’ve stopped fighting, and trust me, I do plenty of those, I come back to this statement: “God/Source/Universe/Guiding Light, I don’t know what to do here. Help me. Show me.” And then I wait, open. A teacher of mine asked me recently, “Did God ask you to do this?” This could be one way to determine if we’re denying, fighting or surrendering. If God didn’t ask us to do what we’re doing, we’re probably not in a pose of surrender. I’ve been practicing. What is God asking me to do? Did God ask me to do this? We will each have our own unique ways of connecting with God/Source/Higher Self. For me, I have come to know when I drop down below the static layer of life and busyness and drama and my own patterns, I tap into a deeper knowing. This where God “speaks” to me. For me, this requires a quiet mind and somewhat settled body, which can be hard to come by, but is maybe the most important thing I can give myself, and ultimately it is a choice I make, to listen or not to listen. I know I need to have a sense of unattachment to the outcome or information I will receive. It’s like listening carefully to someone, but with your whole body instead of just your ears. Sometimes, in this space of listening, I get nothing. Sometimes I get something like “not yet” or “it’s unclear” or just “be still.” It’s not always a definitive, satisfying answer. For the past few weeks, the only thing God has been asking me to do is one thing: write. And it’s the last thing I want to do. When I sit down to write I am plagued with the idea I have nothing of value to say or that no one cares or that it’s too much to even try. My Soul doesn’t care about any of these excuses, but my human mind does. But, it’s the only thing that is clear: Write. Write. Write. Write and take care of myself. Write and take care of my children. Write and sleep. Write and eat. Write and read. Write and pray. And…I haven’t done it. That’s how this works. We can also know exactly what we need to do and not do it. It is no small thing to be honest with ourselves. We will avoid it in every way possible because “there is no coming to consciousness without pain.” There are many parts of ourselves (for good reason!) that want to avoid pain at all costs. Avoid the discomfort. Avoid the shake up. Avoid the unknown. Avoid the raging, the grief, the hurt, the things that we’ve been trying so hard to keep down under the surface. The amount of energy that it takes to keep things at bay is vast. It is big. And when we finally turn towards them (which is what writing does for me) it can feel like we are never going to be able to turn away. Here I am, finally, after months of denying and fighting, I am writing. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

    10 min
See All (102)

About

ReMothering is a podcast dedicated to nourishing women at all points on the mother-continuum. clarabelize.substack.com

Information